Many microdevices, such as integrated circuits, have become so complex that these devices cannot be manually designed. For example, even a simple microprocessor may have millions and millions of transistors that cooperate to form the components of the microprocessor. As a result, electronic design automation tools have been created to assist circuit designers in analyzing a circuit design before it is manufactured. These electronic design automation tools typically will execute one or more electronic design automation (EDA) processes to verify that the circuit design complies with specified requirements, identify problems in the design, modify the circuit design to improve its manufacturability, or some combination thereof. For example, some electronic design automation tools may provide one or more processes for simulating the operation of a circuit manufactured from a circuit design to verify that the design will provides the desired functionality. Still other electronic design automation tools may alternately or additionally provide one or more processes for confirming that a circuit design matches the intended circuit schematic, for identifying portions of a circuit design that do not comply with preferred design conventions, for identifying flaws or other weaknesses the design, or for modifying the circuit design to address any of these issues. Examples of electronic design automation tools include the Calibre family of software tools available from Mentor Graphics Corporation of Wilsonville, Oreg.
As electronic design automation tools continue to develop, greater sophistication is being demanded from these tools. For example, in addition to detecting obvious design flaws, many electronic design automation tools are now expected to identify those design objects in a design that have a significant likelihood of being improperly formed during the manufacturing process, determine the resultant impact on manufacturing yield that these design objects will create, and/or identify design changes that will allow the design objects to be more reliably manufactured during the manufacturing process (e.g., “design-for-manufacture” (DFM)). In order to meet these expectations, a process executed by an electronic design automation tool may need to perform more calculations than with previous generations of electronic design automation tools. For example, a design rule check process may confirm that the polygons used in a physical layout design to form individual wiring lines are separated by a minimum specified distance. In addition, however, the design rule check process also may determine the likelihood that the polygons may nonetheless form the wiring lines with an erroneous bridging fault. This determination may require, for example, calculating the distance between the polygons, the length for which the polygons run adjacent to each other, and the thickness of the polygons at their adjacent portions.
Because even a single process executed by an electronic design automation tool may require millions of calculations, improvements in the speed and efficiency of electronic design automation tools are continuously being sought. Still further, additional functionality for electronic design automation tools also is continuously being sought, in order to improve their usefulness to circuit designers and manufacturers.